343 justifies Halo Kinect features

343 Studios has defended Halo Anniversary’s Kinect features, saying the new modes for the remake of the decade old FPS classic are ‘additive’ – and that they don’t detract from the core game.

“From our perspective it was important for Halo Anniversary to not disrupt the core gameplay, as that’s been our pillar the entire time,” producer Dennis Ries told Eurogamer, “So we looked at it being additive – how could we enhance the core gameplay without changing it?”

Halo Anniversary’s Kinect features were outed at New York Comic Con last week, and introduce voice commands to the game as well as ‘Analyse Mode’, in which players can scan playable areas and unlock content in an in-game library. Both features are exclusive to Kinect.

“One of the things we did was make sure that there’s no achievements associated with Kinect,” said Ries when asked about the upset the features had caused amongst some fans, “As far as the content goes, it is all available online. You can get it all on Waypoint.”

“Yes, I can see [why people might be upset] but I think we able to mitigate a lot of that as we didn’t really take away from people who didn’t buy Kinect. If you have Kinect, it’s a great feature. Similar with the 3D stuff – if you have a 3D TV, you’re going to use it.”